Weekend at Segou

Not for sure how long this has been here

A picture of one of the mud huts we saw in a village along the way

yes, that is a goat on top of that truck....crazy!

fishermen on the Niger River

Autumn enjoying the pool.........

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We got to enjoy the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with ham, turkey, dressing and pumkin pie on Wednesday. I would have never thought we would eat this well in West Africa! Of course on Thursday things were as normal, we washed clothes and then ate tacos. For some reason the people here don't celebrate Thanksgiving! ;-) I have to admit it was a little hard talking to family on Thursday when they were all together enjoying the time eating and watching the football game, but God was faithful to give us His peace. We have to remember during these times that God has a work in store for us here and we are to be faithful to that call.

On Friday morning, us and two other couples packed up and drove 3 1/2 hours to Segou. This was a great accomplishment for us since we aren't fluent in French yet. We made it thru all the roadside police stops without any problems. The only problem is there wasn't any rest stops or gas stations with bathrooms on the way!! This made for an interesting trip. The things we will do in Africa that we wouldn't never thought about doing in America! ;-)

We stayed at a hotel that had a pool and a restaurant with American food. The rooms was very nice, not as nice as Ramada but nice for Africa. They even had wireless internet, I was impressed! They also had satellite tv, of course there was only 6 channels and 5 of them was in french! We ended up watching a lot of CNN. The pool was a nice getaway for Autumn. We got to eat all the cheeseburgers, fries and pizza that we wanted. I was actually getting tired of french fries by the time we left! We went shopping at the market by the Niger River. It was nice and we bought us a wall hanging for our bedroom. I am really excited to start decorating our house when we arrive in Abidjan! (Which is just a little over 2 weeks away!) We got to practice a lot of our french this weekend while we were out. It was really encouraging to see where we have come in 6 weeks! I have attached some pictures from our weekend.

Enjoy the cool weather for us because it is still hot here! I am wishing for a white Christmas, but some reason I don't think I will get it! ;-)

Prayer Requests:

1. Continue to pray for our french learning. I know you hear this every blog but this is the most important thing right now. Without being able to communicate in french, we can not share the story of what Christ has done for them.

2. Pray that we will stay healthly.

3. Pray for the people that God has placed in our life here in Bamako. We only have a short time left here, so pray that we will be able to communicate clearly the hope we have in Jesus.

Miss you all,

Teresa